New Links
Posted: Mon 29 January, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Leave a comment »Somewhere over there on the right, I’ve added a new category of links – Organic Gardening.
It’s something that we’re aiming to be doing a lot of in the new place, growing our own veg and plants, so it seems like a good plan to be building up some links, some back-up, and some ideas.
Self-Generating
Posted: Mon 15 January, 2007 Filed under: Getting Organised, Green, Thoughts Leave a comment »Over the weekend, Dragon was questioning why people talk about saving the planet and so on.
Personally, I don’t talk about “saving the planet”. However, I do believe in working to live ethically, and as greenly as possible. With the new place, we aim to get some solar panels and/or solar tubes for hot water, and (if possible) a wind turbine for some electricity generation as well. We (well, mainly Herself, but I’ll be involved along the way) will also aim to be growing a fair amount of our own vegetables again too, and even possibly some chickens too. Who knows?
But I’m not doing any of it to “save the planet”. I do believe in lowering my impact, and doing what I can. But there’s a variety of reasons, and “saving the planet” isn’t one of them.
I like the idea of being more self-sufficient. I like the idea of generating our own power, so that we’re less reliant on the National Grid, and also on getting power from non-renewable sources. In a selfish way, I don’t want to see us in the shit as and when the power-stations start to run out of fuel, and I believe in being an example. If we start up our own micro-generation stuff, and (if necessary) fight the battles with planning officers and the like, that’s fine – particularly if it makes life easier for other people who come along afterwards.
I also like the idea of getting paid for any spare electricity we happen to generate. We’ve already made some contacts with a local electrician who is cool with our plans, and has the knowledge for doing it all. That’s a promising start. And if we can get the solar panels and/or wind turbine connected in to the National Grid then they pay us for any power we put in to the system. Again, I reckon that’s worthwhile.
Saving the planet? Nope. Helping our own little world along with a minimum of hassle – well, probably with a lot of hassle along the way, but you know what I mean – and also live in a way that allows us to be at least fairly ethical about things, that’s good with me. Really it’s about trying to find a way to live in balance, and maybe finding ways to give things back as well as just taking.
Decisions Made?
Posted: Sun 14 January, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Green, House Purchase Leave a comment »So, we ended up seeing two ore properties today, even though we’d already made a decision about the place we’re going to make an offer on. Why did we still see other places? Because by the time we’d seen the one we wanted, it was too late to cancel today’s viewings, the relevant estate agents had closed, and so we decided to be decent human beings, and still go see them.
Thankfully, neither of the properties today changed our minds about the ones yesterday.
However.
Now, I could gloss over this, and make out it never happened. But I won’t.
So, yesterday we saw two properties (Well, we saw way more than two, but we saw two particular ones) that we really liked. We’d made a decision on one, a fantastic place we both loved. We also had a second choice, which would be a bit more of a project, needs more work, but also ticked all the boxes. The difference between the two?
Property One is the more expensive one, by about £15,000 at the max price – but that puts it over the £250,000 stamp-duty threshold – which means we’d pay £7,800 in stamp duty instead of £2,500 on Property Two. Property One would need a small amount of work, but it would’ve been done quickly, whereas Two needs a lot more work – it’s fine to live in, but there’s a lot we’d want to do. Property One is an old place, whereas Porperty Two is 60s/70s, and has all the ‘character’ of a dead sponge. Oh, and Property One’s garden is OK, but small – and Property Two’s one is feckin’ huge, and sits on a plot of about 1/3rd of an acre…
We revisited both properties today, and did a lot of thinking.
And while last night it was Property One that was going to get the offer made on it, it’s now going to be Property Two. With it we get a huge garden, and a massive potential to expand on the place, increase its value, and make some serious changes. It also gives us the opportunity to add in some green energy stuff, as well as doing a lot more of our own vegetables etc., which Property One just wouldn’t have had.
So yes, we’ve made a decision, and Herself will be making the offer in the morning.
Local Cooling – One Week On
Posted: Fri 8 December, 2006 Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Green Leave a comment »Well, it’s a week since I talked about Local Cooling, and in that week, I’ve apparently saved 5KWh of electricity, which works out as quarter of a tree, or 2.3 barrels of oil.
In that week, Local Cooling has gained about 9,000 users – and while obviously some users will be better than others when it comes to saving energy, it still makes for a lot of people starting to get the idea about saving energy.
And that’s got to be a good thing!
Local Cooling
Posted: Thu 30 November, 2006 Filed under: Getting Organised, Green 1 Comment »A company called UniBlue have released a product called LocalCooling.com, a small application that makes power management on your PC or laptop a lot easier.
Yes, I know a lot of this can be done via the Windows power management stuff – but the application makes it a lot easier to do, without needing to ferret around in Control Panel etc. (As per usual, I’d already changed a lot of the settings in order to reduce power consumption etc., but most people don’t)
It’ll take some time to see how it all pans out, but yeah, initially at least, I’d say it’s worth checking out.
Wanker
Posted: Sun 17 September, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Green, Sweary, Thinking About..., Thoughts 3 Comments »I wrote about this fucking idiot before. A man “addicted” to branded clothes, he’s now going to burn all his branded possessions, and then write a book about his experiences of trying to live brand-free.
What an utter, utter cunt.
There are plenty of ways that this tosser could use to get rid of these items instead of burning them. He could give them away to charty shops. He could sell them off to one of the companies that re-sell second-hand clothes, particularly those with designer labels. Hell, he could just go and shove them all in a clothing recycling bin.
But no, this fucker has to make a show of it, so he’s going to burn them. Not content with being a shallow-minded cunt in the first place, he’s now tagged himself as an egotistical self-centred cunt who’s still shallow-minded as well.
Tosser.
Truth
Posted: Tue 8 August, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Green, Thoughts 2 Comments »I just saw this (sadly unattributed) quote, and thought it summed up a lot of the problem (in corporate terms) for green energy in general…
We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one technical problem — how to run a sunbeam through a meter.